In a bid to curb the high rate of drug and sexual abuses especially among kids, Kazit Children Development Foundation has trained over 200 children in the FCT on effective defenses.
It also educated the participating children on the best ways to guard themselves against early sex or drug abuse through peer influence.
The training came as part of the NGO’s yearly back to school initiative of training and kitting less privileged children with school bags, books and other items for the school year.
KCDF is an NGO which strives to help in the sustenance of the various orphanages, assist to develop children in their academic, emotional and psychological needs and also help to sensitize the society to understand and accept children with social needs.
Speaking during the event, Mrs Aramide Togun, Founder of the NGO, said that the burden of education could no longer be borne by parents alone.
She stressed that it was even so due to the high moral decadence in the society with negative influencers lurking everywhere to lure unsuspecting children.
“Today is also about those pressing issues that teens face. “There has been so much of these sex abuse and manipulation as well as drug abuse and so I just felt that we need to talk to teenagers.
“We wanted the teenagers to know the signs to look out for and how to know and avoid people who intend to lure them into sex or drug abuse.
“It is not just to talk to the teens but to get information from them to help us plan a forum for parents so that these issues can be tackled from both sides with the right awareness,” she said.
Togun said that children were being fed with so much falsehood in a bid to get them to succumb to immoralities, adding that it is through such fora that the issues could be addressed.
With specific example of a child who said that he was told that he should be having sex once a week, Togun said that such are some of the misconceptions she hopes to correct.
She maintained that children had different characteristics, resistance level and exposure which makes such interaction important to better equip them.
On the back to school initiative which hopes to kit less privileged children, Togun said that 70 children benefitted from the 2019 edition.
Giving insights into the content of the bag, she said: “In the bag we have a pack of exercise books, we have water bottle, food flask, we have pencils, pens, socks and we also have math sets.
“Initially we came with 50 bags but somebody has added another 20 that means that 70 people are going to benefit.
“For now we are only giving to children from orphanages but we are hopeful that when our funding improves, we would also give to children from poor homes.
“We have three orphanages in the FCT that we are kiting and we get our funds from the goodwill of people.
“We hope to get more recognition and funding so that we can work with more people and touch more lives,
“We hope to kit children from poor homes, pay school fees and do more,” she said. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the event featured two special sessions where participants educated on sex and drugs.
A guest speaker at the Kazit event, Mrs Kayo Matinikoro told NAN that 80 per cent of sexual abuses are perpetrated by persons that are known to the victim.
She said that people that are supposed to be family, friends, schoolmates, teachers, care givers and so on, made up 80 per cent of sex abusers.
Matinikoro said that the major reason why abuses had fettered and grown was because victims and their parents do not report such abuses.
She maintained that if the abusers are sought out and punished, their next victims would have been saved.
She also called on parents to educate their children about sex and what to guard against, adding that government must also ensure swift and effective handling of reported cases.
Some of the children who spoke with NAN admitted that they have learned new things from the lectures, especially on how to avoid being influenced into early sex or drug abuse.
